


You, Me, and the End of Everything

by sayhitoforever



Series: In Every Universe [2]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Canon Compliant, Hate at First Sight, Implied Character Death, M/M, and fix Kubo's mistakes, blood of course, in this house we stan isane, love at third fight, there is no plot here, this is just an excuse for me to write injured grimmjow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:28:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25788097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sayhitoforever/pseuds/sayhitoforever
Summary: It’s bullshit, he thinks. A cosmic joke, that he and Kurosaki take their last breath at the same time.
Relationships: Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo
Series: In Every Universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832818
Comments: 13
Kudos: 128





	You, Me, and the End of Everything

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mugwortmarrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mugwortmarrow/gifts).



> Bridging canon because Kubo is still ruining my life even after all these years.
> 
> Many thanks to Muggy for sending me the material evidence I needed to write this dumb thing, and for letting me run ideas past the beautiful encyclopedia that is her treasured brain. Much love, darling! 🖤

* * *

Grimmjow manages to roll onto his side, the sand giving way beneath him as he moves. It hurts to be breathe, much less move. And the moment he gets his elbow under him enough to nearly sit up, his vision blacks out. The battle raging a mere Sonido away is loud enough to cover the sound of his whimper as he strains to hold still. It’s a sea of red beneath him, even puddling in patches where the sand has already been oversaturated. Such a stark contrast to the sprawl of white sand beyond him. He waits for his sight to return, breathing shallowly, feeling battered and broken and almost _euphoric._ The feeling is tampered just a little by the lack of blood _inside_ his body.

He tries to draw his knees up closer to his chest, tries to fold them under him to get on all fours, leverage himself upright. But the movement seems to strain something that was barely holding together and Grimmjow _hears_ the gush of his own blood that patters against the soaked sand. Ribs, Kurosaki’s blade sliding home just beneath them, piercing through too much, muscles and organs and shit that was probably important. He tries to haul in a deep breath, but it’s a shuddering gasp, gurgling wetly in his chest and throat.

Grimmjow doesn’t even react to the hand that grips his more intact shoulder a moment later. Barely startles as the steel grip forces him down onto his back in the sand, thought he does let out a string of curses at the brilliant flare of pain that burns through his entire body. His vision is still spotty and he’s squinting up at a pale smudge against the blue sky, trying to assess the threat.

“Stop moving, please,” comes a quiet voice with an equal amount of steel behind it as the hand that hasn’t let go of his shoulder. Holding him _down,_ pinning him to the sand with just a _hand._ Pitiful, weak, disgusting.

“The fuck are you?” he rasps out, punctuating the question with a blood-wet cough.

“Kotetsu Isane, Squad Four Lieutenant.”

Color is beginning to filter back in slowly as Grimmjow continues to squint, chest heaving with labored breaths, each inhale gurgling audibly, worsening. He’s _fucked up_. Kurosaki did a number on him, not that he hadn’t given it back in spades to the Shinigami, but he is— How do you know how deep to go before it’s real?

“Kurosaki—” he mumbles against the surge of something white-hot against his neck. His eyes focus long enough for him to get a proper look at the pale figure against the dome of Las Noches. A woman with silver hair and grey eyes, the black shihakusho of a Shinigami unmistakable, a pale, green light pulsing from the one hand that she’s left hovering over his neck, right where that one-eyed fucker’s sword had struck him. What the hell is she doing? Other than looking at him like _he_ is the lunatic.

Her eyes are wide, gaze baffled. Would have made him laugh in any other situation, seeing a snooty Shinigami look so uncomposed in the face of an enemy. Only the way she’s looking at him makes sense when the logic of it all catches up to him all too slowly. “Kurosaki Ichigo is currently being treated by Inoue Orihime.”

 _Not dead,_ was all Grimmjow heard and that’s all that matters. Grimmjow didn’t kill him, but Nnoitra hadn’t either then. A few seconds later, the Shinigami’s grip on his shoulder loosens before the hand joins her other over his neck. Hot like the fake sun reigning above them, he can feel the reiatsu being poured into his open wounds. He can almost feel them closing, inwardly, working up layer by layer, muscle to fascia to skin, knitting closed slowly.

They don’t speak while she works, hands moving from Grimmjow’s neck to his chest, beginning to heal the wounds Kurosaki inflicted. When she makes her way down to the puncture just below Grimmjow’s ribs, he fists his hands in the sand, back arching involuntarily from the ground as his insides pull back together the way they’re supposed to be. It _burns._ Burns like the crimson limned black reiatsu that’s still pulsing in his wounds, even the ones she’s already worked on. Crackling just beneath his skin like something almost electric, lingering like it belongs there. It burns away the last of his energy, a wave of exhaustion crashing down on him like a wall of sand in a dust storm. It plucks at his eyelids, dragging them down, pulling his consciousness with it.

The Shinigami Lieutenant is a blur above him once more, a smear of grey and pale skin and a black uniform. He knows he should stay awake. So open and exposed, the sounds of battle too close to feel even remotely safe or forgotten. He has to stay awake. But his body is spent, this is his limit, weak, so weak, so tired. 

“I’ve managed to stop the worst of your bleeding, but that was all I could do,” the Shinigami murmurs again, loud enough to be heard over the din of fighting, but still quiet. “Please don’t move, you’ll heal faster on your own if you stay still.”

And she’s gone, the warmth of her body and the energy radiating from her hands disappearing in a quiet brush of air against his barely healed skin.

Grimmjow can’t help it when he begins to drift, the clang of swords fading out under the ringing in his ears, the reverberation of power and movement being carried through the sand almost like a gentle rocking. It’s an all too comfortable lull, and he slips out of consciousness, just a for a moment, a couple seconds, he swears. But when he comes to again, it’s deadly quiet. He blinks blearily, feeling unattached to his body almost, and stares up at a crack in the sky that wasn’t there before.

A gush of black power floods through the hole in the fake blue sky. It distorts the air, makes it nigh unbreathable for a few moments before it dissipates. Just a crack in the painted ceiling of Las Noches through which the true starless, black sky of Hueco Mundo can be seen. It spins as Grimmjow stares up at it, twisting and roiling under his tunneling gaze like the far dunes of the desert, much unlike the sand beneath him. Clumped and still damp with his blood.

It’s enough of an ambient threat to bring Grimmjow to his hazy senses. He would have moved if he had the energy to do so, on instinct alone. Instead he jerks his legs, like a restless twitch, as if he means to hop nimbly onto his feet per usual, and groans as sword-sharp pain pulsates through his whole body, all the way down to his toes. Grimmjow expects another black blast to follow the first, but nothing does. The power that had poured through the ceiling of Aizen’s lies was limned in green, not red. Red like blood, like a vital life force. The black and green could only belong to one asshole: Ulquiorra.

The sheer amount of power that had just blasted in would have been enough to raise his hackles on a good day. Today just so happened to be the worst day. Grimmjow is _cold_ , can’t quite feel his fingers anymore, or his legs for that matter. Frigid cold, and nothing is tingling the way it usually does as dead nerves regenerate. It’s distracting enough that it takes him a slow heartbeat longer than it should have to realize what that flood of dread-black power has snuffed out.

Grimmjow tries to suck air into his empty lungs, body needing the oxygen, but nothing contracts. Nothing tenses enough to draw in even a shallow breath and a cold wash of panic rushes through him. And it feels like that hole in the sky, like the hole in his guts, where everything has been blown clean out. Empty, missing, gone, _void._ And he’s lying belly up in the sand, body seizing, starving for oxygen, eyes fixed on that black hole in the blue sky and everything feels hollow.

 _My prey,_ he thinks fuzzily, sluggishly, _that was my prey, mine, he was mine_. It’s bullshit he thinks lastly, a cosmic joke, that he and Kurosaki take their last breath at the same time.

It means that Aizen wins, that he gets what he wants, because any fool that thinks Kurosaki Ichigo isn’t the _only_ thing standing in Aizen’s way deserves to get stabbed. But at least if they’re both fuckin’ dead, Kurosaki doesn’t get to live his cute little life without keeping his promise to Grimmjow. A sword in the chest, a lie that he enjoyed every minute of it though he knew it had to end. It’s cold, he’s cold, and he doesn’t want be here anymore, can’t decide if he’s lost or just begun, just as everything seems to freeze over. A shell of a body cradled by blood-soaked sand, eyes the same color as the sky fixed unseeingly. _If I can't have him, no one can._ A fitting end then.

Only it doesn’t end.

_It doesn’t end._

In fact, it begins again much the same way it all started. Grimmjow descending under the same, startled hazel gaze, this one in a slightly older face, one that has grown into all of its sharp angles. A face that had been distorted on Kisuke’s shitty screen back in Hueco Mundo. Grimmjow hadn’t been able to appreciate it then like he could now.

 _This. This_ was worth gasping back to life for. This was worth crawling through the sand like some sort of mindless Gillian. This was worth consuming pitiful, lesser hollows, crunching on their bones until his wounds began to heal for good. This was worth devouring every shred of reiryoku he could get his hands on until his own began to replenish. _This_ was worth getting healed by a Shinigami, worth damn near _dying_ for. The instantaneous recognition in every tired line of Kurosaki Ichigo’s face when he looks up at Grimmjow, the wild look in his wide eyes, those spitfire fuckin’ eyes. The one thing about him that hasn’t changed in the slightest, not even after all this time. That look is _his, all his._

“Yo,” he growls just as his feet touch the ground soundlessly, unable to help the leer that splits his face at the naked astonishment in Kurosaki’s eyes. “Long time no see, Kurosaki.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading! 🖤


End file.
